I’ve been waiting for this one for a few months. I knew it would work, but I really wanted to see it in action with real data. Finally got a thunderstorm tonight and have my aquarium lighting synched up with the Tempest lightning strike data via UDP. It’s a sub-second response. Lightning strike, the light display immediately goes of. I literally fisted the air with a “YES” the first time I saw it happen.
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I wonder if the change in Lighting (dark, then bright flashes) is hard on their eyes!
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Apologies to your fish … but that is really awesome!
I can’t image it would be any worse than if they were in a lake during a thunder storm
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How did you set this up if you care to share? Simply awesome!
tweatherman
The light is a WS2812 individually addressable LED strip. I’ve got it connected to a NodeMCU ESP8266 board that is flashed with WLED. The WLED firmware has dozens of effects built in, one of them is this lightning flash. I’ve got a UDP listener that is looking for UDP messages from the hub indicating a lightning strike. My home automation controller is SmartThings, I have the WLED strip added to that as a controllable device. Along with SmartThings, I use SharpTools with SmartThings. SharpTools can use a webhook as a trigger. I have the UDP listener set to do an HTTP request to a URL in SharpTools, when SharpTools get it, it turns off the aquarium lights off, turns on the lightning effect for 5 seconds and then restores the previous state of the light waiting for the next strike
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Can you list what is needed for this project and approximately what the cost is?
tweatherman
Individually addressable light strip About $1.50/ft. I used 6’, so about $9
A NodeMCU board These are from Amazon, and about $3, but if you’re willing to wait 3-4 weeks, you can order them from Aliexpress for $1.70.
5v 1amp power supply. ~$10
That’s all you really need to buy, so total cost about $22
You can flash the NodeMCU board quite easily with a standard micro USB cord, literally plug it into a computer and go to the WLED webpage, search for the web installer and click Install.
This will have the all the stuff you need to operate the light. It has a web interface that you can control it with.
The next step really depends on where you want to go with it and how to trigger it. I use SmartThings for my home automation controller, so that’s what I used. But there are plenty of other ways to trigger it. You could just as well send a http request directly to the light from the listener. Here is some info on the various ways to do it. I haven’t explored any other methods beyond what I was familiar with in SmartThings, so I can’t offer much help there.
Very creative. When do you hear the thunder compared to the flashing?
Cheers Ian 
The flash happens before the thunder. It’s almost instantaneous with the actual strike
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How sad. You should try to get out more.
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Taking the kids to Punta Cana on Sunday for spring break, does that count?
Shhhhh… don’t tell them, it’s a surprise.
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LOL! Have a great time.
I was there in Feb this year - You will love it 
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